Academy planetarium closing to public Published July 29, 2004 U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFPN) -- Officials here are here closing the planetarium doors to the public after 45 years of providing programs about astronomy, flight and navigation to thousands of visitors.The planetarium is one of the academy’s oldest buildings, having been constructed in the late 1950s.It will remain open for use by academy staff, but there will no longer be a staff to run the facility. The remaining two staff positions were eliminated in the last reduction of force.In the 1970s to early ‘80s, the planetarium received more than 200,000 visitors a year; however, in the mid-‘80s academy officials stopped advertising the planetarium and began reducing the staff. In 2001, force-protection actions in the post-9/11 environment nearly eliminated nonmilitary access to academy facilities. Today, the planetarium receives only 20,000 visitors a year.“When the academy was being built, the space age was happening,” said Mickey Schmidt, the planetarium’s director since 1987. “The planetarium symbolized the future of the Air Force in space.”Though the facility had been closed temporarily for renovations in 1985, 1990 and 2000, this is the first time it will close to the public indefinitely.